Will Country Radio Play Beyoncé’s New Songs? A Superstar’s Surprise Move Will Put Old Rules to the Test

Chris Willman
·8 min read
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Is Beyoncé going to get some love at the country radio format, now that she’s released a single, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” that openly embraces the genre? That’s a big question mark, as radio programmers, like many others in the music industry, are still reeling from the shock of her surprise release the night of the Super Bowl, with no apparent plan yet in place to immediately give the tune a promotional push at the format. But her move into country is certainly “topic A,” according to one programmer, even as radio pros take a pause on whether to play the music that is the talk of the nation.

The idea of whether country radio will accept or ignore Beyoncé’s new music became a flashpoint on social media Tuesday when word spread about an Oklahoma station’s terse response to a fan requesting the new release. “I requested ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ at my local country radio station,” wrote a user on X (formerly Twitter), “and after requesting, I received an email from the radio station stating ‘We do not play Beyoncé on KYKC as we are a country music station.” The tweet by user @jusatto tagged one of the many other fan accounts that act as a sort of Beyoncé defense league, and soon it went viral.

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Then, guess what? KYKC’s Facebook account announced later Tuesday that the station had “Texas Hold ‘Em” coming up next in the playlist — a defensive move to fend off the hive, and/or a way for the tiny outlet to capitalize on its newfound national profile.

That initial resistance, followed by a quick acquiescence, offers little real indication of what will happen with Beyoncé’s song nationally. The Oklahoma station in question is far from any major market and is owned by a Native tribe, not one of the major radio conglomerates where programming decisions come down from on high. But it did serve to quickly focus the national social media world’s attention on the subject of whether “Texas Hold ‘Em” will be welcomed with open arms, or spurs, at the bigger chains… or whether the superstar is even concerned with that as much as her fans are.

Whatever happens, or doesn’t, is likely to create waves, given the star’s status as certainly one of the two or three biggest music luminaries in the world, moving toward a format that has proven famously resistant to making its homegrown Black women into stars. If Beyonce doesn’t get big (or any) play at country, will it be a sign of entrenched racism? Or just a sign of country radio doing what country radio always does — move slowly and cautiously, that is, while waiting for cues from a powerful record company? Nervousness about how these questions might play out amid nearly all-white-male playlists is understandable.

Sony Music Nashville reps did not immediately respond to requests for comment about any plans to promote the song at country radio. Neither did reps for two of the biggest radio chains, iHeart and Cumulus.

A handful of reporting country stations played the song once on Monday, probably mostly as part of their morning news programs, says Brian Mansfield, editor of the radio tipsheet Country Insider. Stations were taken by surprise by the song’s release Sunday night (along with a more pensive companion track, “16 Carriages”), and there was no push from Sony for them to play it when the work week started the following day, as they would normally expect from a major release. That doesn’t mean they won’t eventually; it’s not the first time a newsmaking country music song hasn’t made an immediate big splash on radio after making headlines.

“Even when you’re seeing streaming playlists add a record to the top of their playlist, it takes radio a little while to catch up,” Mansfield says. “We saw that with Oliver Anthony [and his viral sensation “Rich Men North of Richmond”]. That was putting up insane consumption numbers, and it took radio forever to get on board with that. There are some key similarities here, along with some differences, but the common thing is that it’s very hard to get a song on the radio when nobody with the record label is saying ‘Hey, you should play this song on the radio.'” Mansfield guesses that a decision about whether to promote the song to radio might be in place, but as of Tuesday, “I don’t know that anybody outside of a very close circle on her team knows what that might be.”

The only station that has played the song several times in rotation the last couple of days, outside of a news context, Mansfield points out, is KBAY in San Francisco — which, as you might guess from the location it serves, tends to skew a bit more progressive than some other country stations.

“I can’t speak for the industry,” says KBAY program director and operations manager Bo Matthews, “but we’re gonna play it. What everybody else will do, I have no idea. I can only tell you that history will show we were early with things like Zach Bryan, whose music is some of the biggest in the world. Country radio has been slow to adopt that, for some reason I can’t figure. I think for most country stations, they really want (the signal) to come from Nashville, and I have no idea what Columbia will do.”

How’s it gone over with KBAY listeners? “We’ve gotten mixed reviews, just as we would from any new song. But I think people are excited to hear it,” Matthews says. “It’s Topic A as a moment in pop culture, and I think if we don’t play it we’re missing the moment. I feel like so many artists are coming to country right now. Post Malone is doing country stuff; he’s worked with Morgan (Wallen) and Hardy, and was at the Super Bowl doing a country-style rendition of ‘America the Beautiful.’ Country is the hottest format, and I think the tent is big enough for all these artists to come out and play. If Beyonce came through their town with a guitar, people would say, ‘Sit down, enjoy yourself and play your music.’ I don’t know why radio wouldn’t be the same way. Wanting to be part of this is exciting.”

Part of the excitement is how unexpected it was — at least to the majority of the world that didn’t realize the superstar was signaling her next direction when she wore a cowboy hat to the Grammys a week before her big reveal. Some radio personalities are wondering if it might have even come as a surprise to some of the Sony team, given that no indications have been forthcoming from the label camp about whether this will get an official radio push or not.

Promotion aside, there’s really no true precedent for what Beyoncé is doing, even after decades of crossover attempts, both successful and not. In a far smaller way, she set her own precedent when she previously released a country song, “Daddy Lessons,” as a track on her 2016 “Lemonade” album — and then performed it on the CMA Awards with the help of the Dixie Chicks, a move that brought both acclaim and racially tinged scorn. But progressing from a one-off to what will apparently be an entire album of original material in that mode, “Act II,” is a superstar move that doesn’t feel remotely in the same league as, say, Lionel Richie recutting some of his old hits in a country mode.

Mansfield feels that the lack of a previous role model for a reigning queen making her first serious move toward the genre explains that’s why there might be some initial confusion at radio.

“You’ve only got a couple of comparables,” Mansfield says. “One of them was Ray Charles [who had a huge, classic crossover album with ‘Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music’] in 1962. That was one of the few places where the artist who’s (newly) doing country is bigger than the format. So you can’t classify this as carpetbagging, because Beyonce isn’t trying to cross over to country (in whole) — she’s just expanding her kingdom.

“It’s not like when a Steven Tyler or Bret Michaels comes in and tries to do country,” he adds. “It’s similar in some ways to the Chicks’ post-country records, where it’s really being operated outside of Nashville. Darius Rucker and Sheryl Crow coming in might be kind of comparable; they had the musical roots in that music, and Beyoncé certainly does, so it’s a little like that. But it’s not quite like any of those — again, these weren’t artists that were bigger than the format.”

Whatever reception Beyoncé ultimately gets, the response to these songs and her forthcoming “Act II” album will be seen through multiple prisms, genre being just one. Race is another, with the near-complete lack of success of Black women in the format providing a historical backdrop that will inevitably be at the fore. Talk about label promotion, slow-crawling playlists or even the superstar’s personal investment in conquering the format may not matter if the public’s ultimate takeaway is that even Bey couldn’t do what Mickey Guyton, Rissi Palmer, Linda Martell and others couldn’t.

Between what might be seen as an opportunity to redirect history and the fact that the star in question is currently big enough to block out the sun, it’s clear that previous rules won’t apply. Or at least that there’ll be some heated discussion if it turns out that they do.

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